Computer users often create documents from a variety of sources, such as text copied from one or more documents, tables copied from spreadsheets, graphic images accessed via another application, and so forth. The user generally arranges these document fragments as desired and edits them as appropriate (which may include adding entirely new information), in order to ultimately produce a final product.
To facilitate such operations, contemporary operating systems and certain application programs each provide a clipboard. In general, a user can cut or copy text and images (clippings) from one source and paste them into a document such as a word processing document or a spreadsheet. While some document-based clipboards preserve multiple clippings, such clipboards are temporary in that when the computer system is re-booted, the clippings are lost. Moreover, typical program clipboards are limited and operate on a first in, first out basis, with no other arrangement provided, whereby the oldest clipping is lost whenever the clipboard is full and another clipping is added. Even clipboards that do not have such limitations still do not allow for other arrangements of the clippings.
For programs having clipboards, when the user changes focus to another program, the most recent clipping is copied to the operating system's clipboard. However the operating system clipboard preserves only the latest clipping, which may then be overwritten by a later clipping from another source, such as content copied from a browser. Although it would be feasible to have the operating system clipboard similarly preserve multiple clippings, the same problems with program clipboards would exist with such an operating system clipboard, namely clippings likewise would be lost upon a re-boot, the oldest clipping would be discarded whenever the clipboard is full and another clipping is added, and/or there is no way to arrange the clippings.
As a result, computer users have implemented their own custom methods for persisting clippings, e.g., dragging clippings to the desktop, creating a document that acts as a depository for clippings, and employing other idiosyncratic methods. While these manual methods work to an extent for some users, what is really needed is an engineered solution for persisting and managing clippings.